Newbie's guide to the Moonsea
BEFORE YOU START Useful Roleplaying Information First and foremost this is a roleplaying server... so whenever possible stay in character. Write down the important names like the name of your god, the place you are from and any weird names that you might forget easily. The game is a D&D campaign setting, so you might want to read... * External pages about the Pen&Paper version, nice for deities, regions and all kinds of background information: ** click ** click * Read the general outline of our setting here Some important details before thinking about what character you want to make: * You might want to play a good guy or good-alignment compatible guy as your first character, evil is fun, but get to know the world before, beeing evil is not easy and you'll have to live with the consequences. * Be aware that choosing a monster race will have a serious impact on your RP. Don't play a half-demon and expect people to be nice. Especially some DMs tend to give you a hard time with City Guard NPCs. * The main town of the new setting openly dislikes arcane magic users and anything planar blooded can be hunted down. Overall the people of Mistriven Falls are wary of anything that looks... odd and could be a threat. * Also our server uses Spell Components for all spells (divine and arcane). Rules, Haks and Other Technical Stuff Make sure you read all the rules on the forum! Most of it can also be found on the wiki here Make sure you have all the haks (found here): Most problems with character creation, crashes and such, result from having the wrong version of the PRC or the haks. Make sure you know what races/classes you are allowed: As you probably alread noticed, this server uses the PRC (manual) so the choices for races, classes, feats, skills and spells is vastly bigger then in the basic NWN game. But as with everything there are some restrictions, because they are buggy or don't fit the setting or are deemed too powerful. *Available Races *Available Classes (if in doubt, ask first, more here) Unless a feat is reported broken by the PRC, there is only one restriction as of now: * Spellfire Horses and riding them is implemented. Climb is tricky as NWN has a funny way to calculate distances, the people from PRC say you have to invest heavily to make it worth it, which probably makes it worthless, just get an item to teleport/dimension door. GETTING STARTED Character Creation When you create your character with the NWN interface don't bother about race, class, skills, spells and feats... you will have to select this all over again. (read on and you will understand) Don't bother too much about character looks either (head, tatoos, etc). What is absolutely important: set your character description in the customization part!!! Otherwise your poor DM's will have to do this with a tool called "Leto", it's a lot of work, while you can just do a fast copy&paste from you favorite text editor to inside the game. Also choose a name without quotes, the quotes would make it very difficult for other players to send you tells. On top of that, the PRC database sometimes reacts in funny ways if you use some special signs, so try to keep it to letters and hyphen. When your character is ready, hit the "play" button... what happens now is still part of the character creation: The real character creation After a little loading time you'll have a dialog straight away (if you don't, there is a problem). This is the real race, class, skill, spell, feat, etc, selection! And this time you get all the PRC races and classes and whatnot... So read through this dialog and do your character build properly. Don't bother about looks here as well, head, tatoos, colors... just hit "keep this" and "yes". Important: It happens sometimes that the Character Creator conversation does not launch after you made a new character. If this occurs: * check that you have all the required PRC files, up to date. * Try again several times with A DIFFERENT CHARACTER EACH TIME. The name *has* to be different from one you previously used, or the character creator will consider it an already made character and will not launch for this character. Sometimes it can take an important number of tries. * Wait 5 minutes between each try. * If it still refuses to launch, ask the DMs if any of them is in the start area, and to clear it before you try again. * As a last resort, ask a DM how long ago the server was reset. At the end of the conversation, it will say: "Make character"... and then you will be booted from the server... this is normal! don't worry! Just shut NWN, start it again and log back in. By booting you, the server saves your real character to the database. Finishing the character creation Once you have logged back in, you will need DM assistance to be teleported to the Island of "character design". Here you will find a lever who will give you the right start XP and gold, depending on your class. If you need to change your character's head model or tatoos or something else, you can do that with the body models. The mirror, off to the side, can change the body colors (hair, tatoo, ...). After that you can use the tailoring models to get your first set of clothes or armor. You should ask in the DM channel if a DM is available to set your languages (they hold the record in answering speed, afaik :) I think I never waited more then 2-3 minutes before someone replied) Rule about languages: the ones you get from your race will already be set, you can ask for one more for each +1 int modifier you have... so an int modifier of +3 means 3 additional languages to start with. For each language you know, you have an "ear", in your inventory. To speak in a language, activate the ear and then type the text in brackets: Greetings The brackets have to be first, no space, no emotes. If you want to use emotes, put them after the text. Emotes have to be surrounded by "*" : *nods* *sit* You will notice that some emotes trigger visual emotes, when you use them. By now you should be a fully finished character with your non-magic armor on. Time step into the world: Go to the creepy glowing figure that looks like the keeper of the dead and ask him to send you into the world. OTHER USEFUL THINGS TO KNOW You might want to boost certain skills because they are quite important: * Appraise - Merchants change their prices depending how well you appraise. It is used in many places on the mod some of the checks are silent but the main portion of the economy is gems and they run on appraise checks. A high enough appraise skill will allow you to identify gems and artwork without paying someone to do it for you. * Fishing - your fishing skill increases over time..... a LONG time. You do not need to do anything to increase your fishing skill except spend time fishing. Fish may be sold for gold and you might catch an item or quest. * Lore - allows you to identify items. Having a high lore skill means you can sort out worthless loot you may find before your inventory becomes overweight, as there are no containers with weight reduction on our server. * Open Locks - even if it's crossclass you might want to invest at least 1-5 points here as just about every door and chest is locked. * Perform - there are insturments in game which will give a small reward of experience or gold for performing with them. * Persuade - many conversation utilize persuade, if your skill is high enough it will open up options and you will find treasure that can only be sold to NPCs, if you have a high enough persuade skill. To quote our esteemed big boss admin DSA: The name of the game is rewarding builds that invest in RP ability. While its very easy to create an uber build that is min-maxed to the extreme, we are going to openly encourage people to NOT take that route by offering experience and RP rewards for things other than tumble, UMD and spellcraft. We have only implemented part 1 of this more will come in the form of crafting skills allowing you to create healkits, whet stones, and repair your armor and weapons from use. DEATH Upon dying, you will be ported to the fugue plane. A clone of your body is dropped on the ground ( headless in most cases). This clone may not be looted. Anyone may come and pick up your body {the clone will vanish and they will get a "body" in inventory} the body is heavy and requires several squares. They may take this body to a few npc priests for raising or " other" activities. They may also take the body to any player whom can cure "death". You may arrange raising by speaking to the npc/pc and then drop the body on the ground {spawning a clone} and the body will be targetted and raised. It is planned that more powerful spells will reduce or eliminate the cost of ressurection. Some npcs will devour your body making raising impossible. Yes they eat you. While this is going on the dead player is on the fugue plane. They can choose to respawn at the place they died.. or at the towns temples. Respawning where you died has a higher gold penalty than respawning at a temple or being raised. You get these choices through a "death token" in your inventory. A timer WILL force you to respawn. Logging off while dead is not advised as you will login dead and no one will be able to revive you unless you respawn. Respawning carries a 20% chance of item loss. The item will be randomly selected from your inventory (equipped or carried or may be a container). If you lose an OOC item such as a emote wand, you will be given a new one after you relog. Currently you are not charged a point of CON for being raised. Dying in some areas has a higher penalty than others. Some NPCs and quests involve you dying by design and generally no cost is associated by these events. CHANGEING YOUR CHARACTER AFTERWARDS We all know that roleplaying makes your character evolve and change over time. He might get a nasty scar or he might loose a finger. His view of the world might change and he might want to dye his hair or maybe he just got married... there are plenty of changes that could happen. At that point you'd want to edit him: his portrait, his description or his name. This is what "LETO" is used for. Leto Request Forum Before doing any request on the forum: Talk to a DM ingame first! Some changes like name changes require you to empty your bank first and make a copy of your character to make sure you don't loose anything. Only DMs can assist you with that. When the Leto is done the DMs will copy you back and give you everything back... items, money, ..., everything you had! ---- PS: credit for the links go to the respective writers/owners and credit for this great PW goes to the Staff. Thanks for giving us this great playground. Category:How to do Category:How to do